Hard Drive Failure

[Neapolitan]

I have a system running Windows XP.

I have a Hard Drive that used to host my Windows XP OS, but it crashed last week... so I had to replace the HD with another one and rebuild the OS.

Now, I am trying to recover some important data from this Hard Drive, however, every time that I try to add the HD as a slave, my system crashes with a blue screen before reaching the Windows XP GUI.

I am getting the message that the system has been shut down to prevent further damage (or whatever)....

Even when I boot using a BlueCon XXL Data Recovery CD, I have no success because it just crashes and reboots before reaching a starting point.

When adding it as an external IDE component, the HD is recognized by the BIOS, but not by Windows XP... so, Easy Recovery PRO isn't affective in this manner.

I'm assuming SpinRite and other programs wouldn't be as well.

Is there a program that I can use that works with Hard Drives that aren't being detected by Windows but definitely exist because they are detected by the BIOS?

Any other recommendations?

[NooNoo]

Welcome to Windrivers Neapolitan!

Spinrite will work because it runs from the floppy. It also talks directly to the drive and doesn't let the bios get in the way. Is the old hard drive formatted with fat32 or ntfs? What make and model of drive?

Be aware that if the logic circuit is screwed up on the hard drive, the data might be there, but it is maddenly unavailable. Fixes? Well if you can find a good drive with exactly the same make and model and revision of the drive, you can try swapping over the circuit boards.

If the data is important, then home cures are at best, iffy... send it to a specialist. All you have to do then is weigh the cost of a data recovery specialist against the worth of your data.

[Neapolitan]

SpinRite will work? I am not using a Floppy Drive (so obsolete)... so can SpinRite make a bootable CD?

The Hard Drive is a Western Digital WD200EB-00CSF0 (20 GB)

The Drive is formatted with NTFS... or I would have tried with a Windows 95,98 or ME machine!

Thanks for the advice. I do not have a similar drive.

[NooNoo]

Spinrite is designed to run from a floppy. Floppies may be obsolete in your view, but often they are the one thing that can get around the problem.

If you are able to create a bootable cd rom, I think spinrite might be able to work from that, but I have never tried. I prefer to take my obsolete floppy drive and use the obsolete isa bus :D

[Neapolitan]

Well, it seems that it only needed to go through the CHKDSK before Windows would allow it to be recognized.

I was able to use NTFS DOS v5.0 CD-ROM which automatically runs the CHKDSK when booting.

Once I got there, there were tons of files that were not accessible; but I was able to use Easy Recovery PRO v6.0 to recover all necessary files.

I have had many Western Digital HDs crash on me as well as Maxtor. But I have 4 Seagate Hard Drives that have been very stable for me for the past few years.

It is my opinion that Seagate makes the most reliable Hard Drive.

[Gollo]

A good set of tools for a non bootable system is included in either the Knoppix (http://www.knoppix.net) or Knoppix-std (http://www.knoppix-std.org) (Security Tool Distribution) The STD version has the tool to reset admin passwords on nt/2k/xp boxes as well. Lot's of goodies.

[Pete]

[FONT=Comic Sans MS]Hi my computer is always going to the blue screen saying windows xp has been shutdown to prevent damage and when i boot up it says SMART has detected that the hard drive wdb 239859843jfd (or somthing) has detected a hard drive failure (GREAT!!), I installed sig guard and it told me the predicted time of failure is the 18th April (which is today, whoopie do), I dont want to take it to a computer repair shop because i already have 2 times!

By the way this is what I think of XP :butt:

Thanks in advance
Pete

[NooNoo]

Pete do you actually have a question?

[Pete]

YES, how do I stop the blue screens and what shall I do about the hard drive (even though it hasn't failed yet!!)
Thanks
Pete

[NooNoo]

So what do the blue screens say? Exact message please. Have you run any diagnostics for the hard drive?
What windows are you using?

[Gollo]

YES, how do I stop the blue screens and what shall I do about the hard drive (even though it hasn't failed yet!!)
Thanks
Pete
Well if your experiancing problems and smart is alerting you I would get a new hard drive. Install your os and then slave the old drive and copy files to the new one.